In quite possibly Plato's most famous dialogue, The Allegory of the Cave is discussed. It illustrates prisoners chained underground all their lives in semi-darkness and unaware of the sunlit world above to discuss the difference between reality itself and our faulty perception of reality. Socrates likens a true understanding of "reality" to the experience of emerging from darkness into the light and being thereby forced to confront facts and situations which had been beyond our imagination before that moment. The experience is painful and temporarily blinding; Glaucon asserts, however, that none of us would wish to give it up once we had seen "reality." Because of how we live, true reality is not obvious to most of us. However, we mistake what we see and hear for reality and truth. They accept these views as reality and they are unable to grasp their overall situation: the cave and images are a ruse, a mere shadow show orchestrated for them by unseen men. At some point, a prisoner is set free and is forced to see the situation inside the cave. Initially, one does not want to give up the security of his or her familiar reality the person has to be dragged past the fire and up the entranceway. This is a difficult and painful struggle. When individuals step into the sunshine, their eyes slowly accommodate to the light and their fundamental view of the world, of reality, is transformed. They come to see a deeper, more genuine and authentic reality. This reality is marked by reason. The individual then makes the painful readjustment back into the darkness of the cave to free the prisoners. However, because he now seems mad describing a new strange reality they reject him to the point of threatening to kill him. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a direct representation of the human condition, the circumstances we as humans presently encounter, circumstances such as conceptual frameworks, or basic beliefs, and our typical behaviors in society.
